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Wednesday, 5 November 2014

(vol 1) CHAPTER 39: “NaNoWriMo – Day 5.”

Since November 1st I have been busy writing my latest project
for NaNoWriMo and am happy to say that I’m currently ahead of schedule.

DAY 1 – 2024 words

A great start to this year’s project. As always I like to do
my best to keep to the 1667 target per day and I managed that on Saturday
before I even got to lunch time. Unfortunately I had another project with a
deadline that I need to finish so the rest of the day went on that.

Half way through Chapter One I did start to struggle but then
my brain suggested I put a gang of highwaymen into the scene to through up a
little conflict and it worked like a charm.

DAY 2 – 1781 words

Another good day despite having to go present shopping in the
morning and then to my nephews birthday party in the evening. Still, thanks to
the wife for giving me some time to myself to crack on. And as with the
previous day I had another writing project, this time my entry for Flash
Frenzy, to get done. Still, the fact
that I managed to beat my NaNo target and get other things written gave me a
nice little confidence boost.

DAY 3 – 2723 words

I’ve started to fall into a pattern of a chapter a day and
Chapter three just got away from me. I couldn’t stop and ended up exceeding my
word target by 1100. Can’t say no to extra words.

Chapter 3 was a bit more challenging than the weekends work
as I’m now thread a conspiracy into the plot and this had me wracking my brains
for a little while. Still, with a little brainstorming, I think I’ve come up
with a threat that is much improved over the original, paper thin idea I had.

DAY 4 – 233 words

Every NaNoWriMo has its bad days and this was my first. With
my Netbook broken I have no way of typing up anything on my work lunches so it
all has to be done at home in the evenings. This is fine on any other day but
last night was Quiz Night. Still 233 words are better than nothing and I got a
nice little opening to Chapter 4.

DAY 5 – 3242 words

With holiday to use up at work, I thought I might be nice to
use two days at each end of NaNoWriMo. So today is the first of those. After
waving the wife off to work and dropping my son of at the child minders, I came
home, booted up the laptop and got to work. I took a break after the first 1000
and organised my Stephen King collection into chronological order (been meaning
to do that for months). After a quick snack I jumped back onto Scrivener and
managed another 1000 before getting a call from the child minder to let me know
my son had a rash and could I pick him.

After a quick trip to the doctors he’s fine. Just have to
keep an eye on him. I managed to get a little more done after dinner but my
plan for 5000 words today has drifted away on the wind. Still, I’ve got the 14th
and 27th off so there’s still time to accomplish a write-a-thon this
month.

PREVIOUSLY ON FALLEN
SWORDS . . .

The story itself is coming along nicely. A few of the lightly
planned details have now been reworked and defined helping me to go forward. One
in particular is the historical event that is the catalyst to the main issue
for the world. All I had planned for this event before I started writing was
that it was a cataclysmic disaster in the vein of Pompeii or Krakatoa. After
finishing Chapter Two I now have a reason for this disaster and a sub plot that
leads to its cause.

I’m also enjoying those moments when little C-list characters
turn up that you hadn’t planned for in the chapter notes. One such character
was the leader of the Bandits who turn up in Chapter One. It’s rare for me to
have such a fully formed character pop into my head but he did. I saw his
costume, heard his speech and he just ‘fell’ onto the page. I’m tempted to
bring him back later because I think he deserves more screen time.

UPDATES

And that’s about it. So far so good. I’m going at a nice,
steady pace, despite today’s little hiccup. Fingers crossed I can carry this
momentum forward and get another 10,000 under my belt before next week’s post.

Good luck to all those currently taking park, whether your
word count is 1000 or 10,000. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and as I mentioned
last week, my 2007 entry seemed doomed to fail until I hit three 7000+ days in
a row in the last week.

Big shout out to Adam Nelson (15433), Caitlin McColl (5668),
David Graffham (6371) and Rasha Tayaket (5689). These four are my current
buddies on NaNoWriMo and all four are doing really well in these first few
days. Keep up the good writing guys.